After our romantic evening last night, we had to get up early this morning and catch a train to Milan. He had another so-so breakfast with a lot of attitude at the Avogaria hotel, and John paid the bill after we ate. He did not hate it as much as I did, but I do not think he would choose to stay there again. Our vaporetti passes had expired, and I wondered if we would meet up again with the fare inspector on our short boat ride to the train station. Thankfully, we did not.
The train station on the island of Venice is a lot nicer than the one on the mainland. We found our train with no particular problem, and thankfully we were once again in first class. This time, however, the train was a full. John and I had seats opposite each other, and after we stopped in Padua we both had somebody sitting next to us. After a while, the young lady sitting next to John asked if we could double check her English spelling on an email, and pretty soon we were having a great conversation. Her name was Sylvia and she lives in Milan.
One of the many endearing traits about John is how much he loves to talk to strangers and how comfortable he makes them feel. Sylvia not only told us a lot about Milan, but also walked us a few short blocks from the train station to our hotel.
This time we are staying at a more normal - though perhaps less interesting - accommodation. The Best Western Hotel Galles is a business hotel just off the Corso Buenos Aires in one of the cities many shopping districts. After we checked in we decided to take a nap as we had a big evening ahead of us. We then went off to use the hotel’s lovely spa. We had it all to ourselves! Feeling refreshed, we decided to head to the historic center of town.
We took the subway four short stops and when we arrived at the central square, the Piazza del Duomo. There was a man there doing some strange routine with a puppet and a CD player.
We walked a few feet further and we we were facing Milan’s magnificent cathedral. The Duomo is architecturally unique on many levels. It is basically a gothic design, but done in beautiful white marble instead of the usual limestone or granite. And many neoclassical elements have been incorporated into the design as well.
Right next to it on the piazza is the cathedral of commerce, Milan’s famous Galleria.
One of our guide books suggested eating dinner on the roof of a department store. The food was not that interesting, but it had amazing views of the Duomo.
On our way out, we went through the store’s food court. We loved these shoes. Made of chocolate and other sweets, they are completely edible. The Milanese are famous for their love of shoes in any form.
Our big adventure for the evening was going to La Scala, possibly the most celebrated opera house in the world. John and I had stayed up until two o’clock in the morning a couple months ago to get tickets to tonight’s performance the moment they went on sale in Milan.
Now the tickets were selling for up to 240€ - that’s about 300 dollars - for this performance. We managed to get some cheap seats, only 28€ each. We knew that they were up in the gallery. We did not know just how cramped it would be there. Even sitting down, I think John’s head hit the ceiling. But we had unobstructed views of the stage and the sound as absolutely perfect.
We watched a production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. All of Mozart’s operas are a little weird, and this one is may be the strangest of them all. It is all about two young soldiers who believe that their fiancees are utterly virtuous. The older Don Antonio tells them that all women are unfaithful and suggests a scheme where they will pretend to leave for war but then return in the disguise of Albanian soldiers and woo the women. The girls finally surrender their virtue, but instead of being angry about it men simply accepts that this is just the way women are.
The production we saw was originally done in Salzburg. It tries - maybe not altogether successfully - to use a contemporary setting.
These are, by the way, publicity stills. I was not gauche enough to try to take pictures during the opera, and even in the gallery I would probably have been hanged if I had tried. The Milanese take opera seriously, and the people sitting up in the cheap seats are the real music lovers.
There is a real class system still at work at La Scala. We poor people had to enter through a separate staircase, and we were not allowed to enter the main lobby at intermission. Of course, it being Italy, most of the people went outside to smoke anyhow. So we could look at the fashions on display.
And even if we did not spent time with the most stylish people in northern Italy, at least we could say that we were there!
Tomorrow we have a tour of the city and then we take off for London.
